Why Dilma Cancelled On Obama, Brazil

This week we were supposed to be celebrating the first state visit to the White House by a Brazilian president in nearly two decades. Instead we are recognizing a very different first—the first time a world leader has declined to attend a state dinner with the President of the United States.

President Barak Obama earlier this year extended his only State Dinner invitation in 2013 to Presidenta Dilma Rousseff of Brazil. At the time she accepted, this was celebrated as a continuing step in rebuilding a tentative relationship between these two powerful nations.

In recent weeks, however, after news broke that the NSA was spying not just on Brazilian citizens but also on the Presidenta’s own personal phone calls and emails, Rousseff canceled the State Dinner.